CloudShare Blog

I love “beta” – Visual Studio 2011

By Danielle Arad - March 13, 2012

Have you played with Visual Studio 2011 yet?! If not, I’ve got something for you.

But first, my observations…

Of the current betas – Windows Server 8, Windows 8, SQL 2012, Visual Studio 2011, TFS, etc., etc. – the one I was most excited about was Visual Studio.

Windows 8 I played with, and said “oh yeah, that’s cute,” but it didn’t really impact my productivity. SQL is great, but I need to see it working with SharePoint. And Server, ok haven’t played with that one yet…that’s coming up next. But Visual Studio, that’s where I spent all my time back in the day, and still do on slow weekends.

My biggest observation is the new UI trend MS is going with, Metro. Tight edges, simple colors, that aesthetic is everywhere now, even on Visual Studio. I think it’s very interesting and it will be cool to see where the metro UI goes. But that’s just cosmetics.

What was the first thing you did when you tried Visual Studio 2011?

First thing I did was look at the available SharePoint Projects. Not much has changed from the 2008 version, but still very exciting. Then, I played around with .Net FrameWork 4.5. Create my own Metro app? Yes please. I’m excited about the better garbage collection…and large objects (very important support for my hobby big data apps).

Anyway, that’s as far as I got, but now it’s your turn. I have made my CloudShare environment with Visual Studio 2011 “Beta” available to YOU. Follow the link below and you too can play with the latest visual studio on a preconfigured Windows 7 Virtual Machine!